Mayra Andrade

Mayra Andrade has the same charm on her voice when she’s singing and when she’s talking – she knows that every detail is important. Hearing her tell her own story – her «storia»… - is not very different from listening to one of her records. The singularity of Mayra’s voice and posture, both on stage and on the studio, comes after all from very far away, from her family, from the days spent by the turntable and travelling the world. It comes from, when still a child, she would stand before a mirror looking for a reflection, maybe looking for her own future.
The singer remembers how her family was important during those first baby steps. Ricardo, her cousin and godfather, was her first musical partner. He understood early that she loved music and started composing simple songs that spoke about her and her other cousins, childish simple things but that her memory kept secure. When she was 4 or 5 years old, Mayra amused her family by singing Caetano Veloso songs, dancing and doing theatrical improvisations.

Mayra spent her first years on the Ténis neighborhood, on the Plateau (Cape Verde). She lived one minute away from the Pentagrama school, the only musical initiation school on the island. She never formally enrolled, but it was there that she spent a good part of her free time and the teacher Tó Tavares used to call her to sing and thus giving the guitar students something to play along with. The participation on those classes soon led to a first invitation to record, but her mom turned it down. When she was 6, Mayra, her mother and her stepfather, at the time ambassador of Cape Verde, went to live in Senegal then in Angola and Germany, where Mayra studied on a boarding school from when she was 11 until she turned 14.
Later, Mayra returned to Cape Verde where, when she was 15, she sang in public (outside a school environment) for the first time. It was the release of a record called “Cap Vert l’enfant (vol. I)” at the Culture Palace, in Praia – her city. She asked the organizers from the French Cultural Center to let her sing two songs for her sister who was leaving to Lisbon in a few days. Mayra wanted her to hear her sing. No one knew her as a singer, but somehow they let her go on stage. She also did not have any musicians to accompany her, but thanks to Mito, a cousin who was a painter, she was introduced to the guitar player Angelo Andrade and to the flute player Robert Pemberton, a scotish who moved to Cape Verde when he discovered the music of Cesária Évora. «Último Desejo», a song learned on a Maria Bethania record, and «Les Portes de Paris» from the musical «Notre Dame de Paris» were the first songs Mayra used to astonish the public. Not by accident, two songs that pointed to two important destinies in her future – Brazil and France.

On the 15th of August of 2000, a religious day dedicated to the saint that watches over the city of Praia, Our Lady of Grace, Mayra Andrade performed her first solo concert on the Alexandre Albuquerque square. The invitations to other shows started right there.
She was invited to go to Lisbon to sing at the prestigious Coliseum at a concert that signaled the meeting of three different generations of cape verdean musicians. Soon after she was invited to the jazz festival “Les Rendez-Vous de L’ Erdre” in Nantes. That was Mayra’s first performance in France.
The meeting with Orlando Pantera was the crucial event of her artistic development: at the time she did not know what she wanted to do, but she knew she wanted something different and Pantera showed her the way. That was an important moment on the history of the culture of Cape Verde, a moment that Mayra describes as “effervescent”, with new ideas and traditions finding ways to live together only 25 years after the independence. A new musical generation was born there and then and Mayra, only 15 years old, was not a simple witness to the events, but an active participant that never stopped doing things her own way. Like the morna that even against the resistance of the puritans she always sung with her own feeling and very freely.
In 2001, Mayra and Pantera were selected to represent Cape Verde on the Francophony Games in Canada. That was a season of definition but also of deep sadness motivated by the unexpected death of Pantera. Mayra returned home with the gold medal and the Francophony Parliament decided to grant her a scholarship so she could perfect her vocal technique. She went away, once again.

When she was only 17, Mayra discovered Paris and started living alone. She crossed paths with musicians from all over the world, started to be on stage regularly and soon attracted the attention of record labels and the press that responded to the insisting rumors that said there was a new and amazing voice in town. To Mayra, this was a period of intense learning with the musical universe opening before her ears. In Cape Verde, Mayra had broadened her horizons and she sung everything, Brazilian popular music, boleros, blues and French chanson, besides traditional repertoire, but it was in Paris that she focused her attention on the sounds of her own country. It was with the discovery of her own voice that the idea and the necessity of recording an album finally got hold of her. A contract was signed with Sony and the necessary steps to record her first album, «Navega», were taken. The title (that can be translated into «sail») defined a life of real journeys, but also artistic ones, a personal travel that branded the artistic identity of Mayra.
«Navega» was recorded in Paris in three weeks and it was produced by Jacques Ehrhart. It was recorded with excellent musicians, it included a repertoire refined by several years of stage presentations and it reflected that stage spirit. This album went on to sell more than 80 thousand copies getting a Gold Award. Mayra started to record important collaborations with people like Charles Aznavour («Je Danse Avec L’Amour») or Chico Buarque and Lenine («Amor, Cuidado!»). More recently, her musical adventures led to collaborations with Youssou N’Dour, Mart’nalia, Carlinhos Brown, Margareth de Menezes, Hugh Coltman, Angélique Kidjo, Yael Naim, Asa, Pedro Moutinho and many others.

The applause for «Navega» did not manifest only on the pages of the international press but were also translated into some important prizes. In 2007, Mayra received a distinction from the German Record Critics association and on the same year the Culture Minister of Cape Verde awarded her a Cultural Merit Medal. The prizes continued in 2008, with BBC3 distinguishing the singer on the World Music universe with the revelation of the year prize. Also, in Cuba, she got awarded a Cubadisco, an important recognition of her universal appeal. On the last few years, Mayra has stepped on such important stages as the Carnegie Hall, Le Casino de Paris, Royal Albert Hall, Barbican Center, Coliseu dos Recreios of Lisbon and the Coliseu of Porto, Centro Cultural de Belem also in Lisbon or La Cigale. She is also a regular feature on some of the worlds main festivals like the Central Park Summer Stage, Printemps de Bourges, Womad Festivals, Jazz Baltica, Expo Universal of Beijing, Jazz Festival of Montreal. Very different contexts, but with similar ovations.

With «Stória, stória...», her second album, Mayra wanted to do a more calculated record and she wanted to have more time to sing. Together with Alê Siqueira and some great musicians and partners that had already contributed to her debut album (Quim Alves, Etienne Mbappé, Zé Luís Nascimento), Mayra spent two months in the studio, essentially between Paris and São Paulo, Brazil, but also on Rio de janeiro, Salvador and Havana, Cuba, a city from where Mayra returned with the sensation of wanting to discover that other island where she was born. The German Record Critics association gave it’s main prize to Mayra again, this time awarding «Stória, stória…», her second album. In 2010, she was distinguished by the President of Cape Verde with the very important 1st Class Medal of the Order of the Volcano.

Mayra Andrade, we now understand, has always pursued her dreams and never allowed music to be a mere accident in her life. That resolve still is the real motor of her career. «There’s much still to do! My luck is that I come from a small country, almost unknown and with very little natural resources where the main export is music». Between Cape Verde and the world is where Mayra discovered her place. Invented her place. A place where she can record with Jaques Morelenbaum, Roberto Fonseca, with the sax player Carlos Martins, Mariana Aydar, Paulo Flores or Idan Rachel. Cape Verde, France, Brazil, Cuba… the world of Mayra Andrade is wide and full of music.

Now, at the end of 2010, Mayra returns with a new record, na intimate register recorded live with an acoustic trio - Munir Hossn, guitar; Zé Luis Nascimento, percussion; Rafael Paseiro, doublebass – and with a pair of guests - Vincent Ségal, cello ; Hugh Coltman, voice. The title, «Studio 105» is so simple and direct as the music this new release includes.

With the CD comes also a DVD that documents this adventure of musical economy that allows us to see Mayra under another light.
Mayra Andrade is an artist that does not accept labels and that prefers to define her path exploring less travelled ways. Mayra believes that experimentation in crucial to grow, that creation needs liberty so music is born free and always renovated. Mayra knows very well what she wants and even better what she does not want. She has always knew. And she is already writing the next chapters of her «storia».